Or is it? An old favorite.

p.s Blogging would be very light till July–even by the standards of this blog. Be good.

Writes Paul Lewis,

Quite so – so why not produce some green-tops and have their batsmen wondering about things other than how many centuries they will score and whether it will be Goanese fish curry for lunch?

The answer, of course, is money. New Zealand Cricket, like every other cricket board in the world, is terrified of India because they are the new powerbrokers; the Keepers Of The Cash.

Their money has cascaded through the game like acid rain, eroding the old order.

Cricket boards and players alike have been seduced by the bounty.

If we’d offended them by producing a green-top and running through them like a prune and licorice vindaloo, well, India might not return and might use their power to squeeze New Zealand out of lucrative events and tours.[link]

I despise much of what BCCI does. They are frequently liable to behave like a bunch of thugs punch drunk on power and money–witness their bullying of ICL affiliated players commentating on the New Zealand series.

But even then, this goes a little too far. I don’t think BCCI has reached the stage where it  can dictate pitches on tours. I mean, what next? India did not fold up on the fourth  day because Lalit Modi called NZ IPL players and told them he will throw them out of the cash-rich tournament if they dared to bowl well.

The real reason why NZC is preparing the pitches it is (indeed, most boards in the world), is because they make more money if matches last the whole distance. Quite simply, a five day test match yields far more revenues–from gate collections to television rights–than a three day match on a greentop. The Indian series is obviously lucrative–the NZC board expects to make nearly NZ$25 million from it–and it wants to milk it for it all it can. India can afford to ignore such concerns–even here, we are hardly preparing the kind of dust-bowls common in the early 1990s–because for the Indian board, test match earnings are loose change they would probably not even notice if they popped out of Lalit Modi’s pockets.

Silly to blame BCCI for that! And really, in Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma, India has probably one of the world’s best new ball attacks. Hard to imagine they would be cowering in their boots if they had to play on a greentop. Perhaps, that is another significant reason why it is not easy to frighten India these days by preparing bouncy pitches: The Indian cricket team is simply more skillful and better balanced than a lot of teams which have toured before.

And finally, if the Indian board was as powerful as Lewis claims, they would never tour–after all, the tv rights as well as gate collections are owned by the home board. Arguably, the Indian board makes very little money when they tour. And boy, does the BCCI love money! Hell, if BCCI had its way completely, both one day as well test cricket would be disbanded and we would play five IPL tournament a year or maybe more depending upon Lalit Modi’s moods.

p.s On another note, Sachin Tendulkar is quite close to his imperious best in New Zealand. He may have been around since Dinosaurs roamed the streets and might have scored like 5 million runs, but for an Indian cricket fan, there is little which gives as much pleasure as watching Tendulkar in full flow. He is special.

I assume he is comparing  millions of students in America who go to public schools to the privileged few in India–admittedly, still a substantial number considering India’s population–who have access to good private schools.

The other couple of hundred million kids who are forced to go to wretched public schools because their parents are too poor to afford anything else and because the policymakers are too busy investing in sexy new IITs and medical schools would be hard pressed to compete with kids in sub-Saharan Africa.

Just ask the folks at Pratham.

This is the Thomas Friedman effect, I suppose.

p.s Here’s how Sweden does it.

Quite funny!

An absolute favorite.

Govinda ji speaketh,

They say you didn’t give enough time to your constituency.
No one should comment like that. I stood where no one could and I did this. I will also say that I stood the ground when everyone was running. So don’t ask me how much I walked and why I didn’t run.[link]

There is much else in the interview which is beyond understanding but this part is truly beyond compare.

Be glad he never spoke in the parliament.

Fourth, many of us may claim that it is the choice of the girl to live her personal life the way she wants to. But increasing instances of these acts are certainly indicative of the obscenity that has become acceptable in the garb of modernity. Acceptance of vulgar display of skin and sex in advertisements, movies and day-to-day attire makes the younger generation acknowledge the change as a done behaviour. So, a strip tease by a girl for a fellow student should not be alarming for any of us. It should only provoke us to think whether we are moving in the right direction?[link]

It is outrageous that people would invoke their personal sense of morality when dealing with essentially criminal issues. The girl may have agreed to striptease for her bf and  allowed him to film it but it certainly does not follow that she had given him the right to publicly release those videos. The girl’s act was stupid and naive; her bf’s act was despicable and criminal. There is a difference.

What if a person released their spouse’s video shot while they were engaged in certain private acts? Would it be remarkably different from this case? Would it be then be justified to rant against increasing ”obsecenity” in the society?

Womyn are stupid.

According to the ICC, Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) were unable to provide a guarantee during a teleconference on Wednesday that there would be no rains in Colombo during the tournament which runs from September 24-October 5. (emphasis mine)[link]

I wonder if SA board can provide a guarantee that there wouldbe no rains in SA during the aforementioned period. Or anyone else for that matter. I mean when I last checked, cricket board approval is not required before it rains, you know. Not even Lalit Modi has made that claim yet.

Maybe they should have tried dialing Parjanya dude himself.

(Since any of you are unlikely to read Pragati)

Let’s keep our republic.

BEFORE SHE was selected by John McCain as his running mate in the 2008 US presidential elections, Sarah Palin was a little known governor of a distant American state. Venerated and despised in equal measure—depending upon your culturopolitical affiliation—Mrs Palin was an old style cultural warrior. Proof that even in a stable, modern democracy like the United States, cultural differences persist. For example, almost forty years after Roe vs Wade was decided, abortion still remains a hot button issue.

In a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country like India, the edges are more sharply drawn. Is there an Indian culture? Does it define our nationhood or is it a concept solely meant to preserve traditional hierarchies and power structure?

Amorphous as the concept may be, and despite the virtually insurmountable definitional challenges, cultural identities matter and are increasingly more meaningful to people. Human societies, even if organised around nation states, don’t exist in a vacuum. There has to be a reference point and that are usually markers of cultural identities: ethnic groups, language and religion.

Therein lie the seeds of conflict. Or, as Samuel Huntington has argued, “We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against.” Essentially, most people are against something rather than in favour of anything.

The controversy in Mangalore—where a band of self-appointed culture warriors attacked female pub-goers—that currently rages on in opinion columns, television stations and cyberspace is merely an extension of what has happened elsewhere: from the streets of Srinagar to the backlanes of Mumbai, a city whose changed name itself reflects cultural revisionism. And that debate can be placed at multiple levels.

At the simplest, it is easy enough to see the Mangalore incident as a conflict between two visions: an atavistic philosophy with regressive attitude towards women’s place in society, countered by a more libertine vision, which, at least superficially, draws on notions of freedom and individual liberty.

On the other hand, in places like Mumbai, it has played out on a more ethnic-cultural platform. Whatever may be its idiom, the roots can be traced back to a rapidly changing Indian society searching for its inflexion point.

The hackneyed response from left-liberal sections to such cultural conflicts is to either dismiss the role of culture entirely or engage in doctrinal wars over its contours—for instance, by citing the odes to Soma in classical Indian texts to counter the Sri Ram Sene’s angst against alcohol. But this is an endless debate where no amount of evidence will ever convince the other side.

Other commentators, most noticeably Pratap Bhanu Mehta, have advocated open conversations on “what new social values signify and how they can be properly embedded in society without repression and conflict.” From the perspective of social advancement, these conversations may be important but they are less useful in resolving cultural conflicts. For the notion of individual freedom militates against conversations originating from within existing societal norms. Understanding the angst against freedom or against “culturally inappropriate behaviour” does not automatically translate into an ability to address them. Reconciliation between such diametrically opposed views is virtually impossible or, even if achieved, would be momentary at best.

If not in social discourse, where does the solution lie? For that the debate needs to be framed properly. What is addressable is not the Sri Ram Sene’s views—in a democracy, everyone is entitled to their opinions, howsoever archaic they may be—but its recourse to violence. And indulging in hooliganism is the rule rather than exception for such groups.

Therein lies the role of the state. The Indian constitution says that amongst other things India is a “democratic republic.” A republic believes in the rule of law, and not the rule of men—the republican philosophy is against the rule of dictators or kings, but also against the rule of ephemeral majorities. A democracy too is against tyrants, but it, by definition, supports the rule of the majority

.

Now, majority decision-making is unambiguously correct when we elect our leader; use force to protect life and property; or quell communal secession. Essentially, it represents the idea of a liberal democracy—popular democracy restrained by its faith in constitutional processes and rule of law.

In other words, democracy seems to be the best way of operating the republic. But the idea of democracy becomes counter-productive when it is used against republicanism itself. If a republic is against the rule of men, and it represents the actualization of an implicit social contract—an understanding that men have certain inalienable rights—that not all majority decisions carry legitimacy.

So debates on whether visiting pubs enjoy social sanction or is consistent with Indian culture become redundant. The role of the state is not to act as moral arbiter on appropriateness of adult behaviour or adjudicate cultural disputes but to use its power to preserve the rights it explicitly guarantees to its citizens. And in a democratic republic, the rights are protected through rule of law. The Indian state is morally bound to secure those rights for its citizens when they are threatened by non-state actors—whether terrorists or vigilante groups. That is what civil society should demand. The anti-Sri Ram Sene groups would have served a much higher purpose if they had directed their ire at the government rather than individuals or specific political parties.

Unfortunately, despite our constitutional proclamations, the Indian republic is moving away from one that does not believe in prosecuting someone unless the there has been harm to someone else’s life, liberty or property, to a partially constrained semi-majoritarian democracy. It is hard for Indian governments to criticise Sri Ram Sene’s moral policing when they have happily indulged in the same—from banning books to banishing artists. In principle, how is vigilantism

of fringe groups different from the state’s reluctance to de-criminalise certain acts of private, consensual sex between two adult individuals?

Constitutional weaknesses show over time. Today’s Britain can be understood as a benevolent totalitarian state, whereas the United States, despite all its weaknesses, can justifiably claim to have lived up to Benjamin Franklin’s challenge in response to an American’s question regarding what kind of government did their Constitution beget: “A Republic, if you can keep it.’’

Let us keep our Republic.

Update: This is Maths Ninja!!!!!

Hey Eshwar, this is so totally hilarious…

”This is a difference in opinion”. ROFL(via)

Hey, I do all my work too!!!!!

The daily grind of looking after their children and families, albeit with no remuneration, has led housewives in Kerala to form a trade union, demanding that the government pay them a fixed salary and old-age pension for the services being rendered.

Celebrating international Women’s Day on Sunday, they said a registered union would be formed by the month-end.[link]

This is so totally like a Bollywood movie except..err…for the clothes.

(NSFW)

Opines The Times of India,

Gandhi’s legacy is actually a double one. Being the Father of the Nation, if we are to take that metaphor seriously, pitches him squarely in the realm of politics. But the cult of veneration gives him an aura of saintliness, when spirituality ought to belong to a different realm than politics. In the context of India’s spiritual pantheon which includes such figures as Buddha, Kabir, Shankara, Mirabai, Guru Nanak, Chaitanya, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti Gandhi’s case looks weak. We would be losing out on the richness of India’s spiritual tradition if we pretended that it begins and ends at Gandhi.

Breaking down the wall between spirituality and politics leads not only to a dilution of the former, but hurts the latter as well. It creates a spirit of uncritical veneration that isn’t good for politics in the 21st century. Some Gandhian policies clearly can’t work. He was against industry, for example, yet a billion Indians cannot be fed and clothed on agriculture alone. Mysticism is entirely misplaced in economic and political matters. Let us not put Gandhi on a pedestal. He himself would have been uncomfortable there.[link]

In the battle between the Indian nation and James Otis, there was never really any doubt as to who will win.

The bastard walked with a couple of million bucks. I suggest they make this a case study in a MBA course: How to turn 20 grand into 2 million.

But this is so totally awesome!!!

See, I am not the only pseudo-intellectual!

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Ring any bells? How about: “The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats.” Many will not have read the novel from which these are among the opening lines – but nearly half of us are happy to lie and say we have, a survey reveals today.

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four comes top in a poll of the UK’s guilty reading secrets. Asked if they had ever claimed to read a book when they had not, 65% of respondents said yes and 42% said they had falsely claimed to have read Orwell’s classic in order to impress. This is followed by Tolstoy’s War and Peace (31%), James Joyce’s Ulysses (25%) and the Bible (24%).[link]